I'm back home after coming back from a 11 week vacation in Japan and can declare,as the title says,"Playing it Now",well,the DQ VII background screen is playing,not really playing since I'm typing it up. I'm so glad I had a good excuse to buy a Japanese 3DS,since it nicely compliments the English one I have.

What I like about the game so far.......Furigana! I only know about 200 or so Kanji and the Furigana in game will help me a lot in learning new Kanji,though not exactly by meaning. I guess I should have learned all the Kanji first before hand but well,its all good in the end!

I haven't got too far into the game,just enough to have the first party member join and then save the game. Sometimes,coming back from a vacation for more then the usual time,need to take it easy and ease back into real life at home instead of being in Japan....which I had a very fun time.

Anyhow,looking forward to getting past the part I never got past on the PS version a good long way back.---My vacation in Japan is now over,11 weeks of fun gone,now I'm back home in Canada. I miss Japan already. :(

I'm back home after coming back from a 11 week vacation in Japan and can declare,as the title says,"Playing it Now",well,the DQ VII background screen is playing,not really playing since I'm typing it up. I'm so glad I had a good excuse to buy a Japanese 3DS,since it nicely compliments the English one I have.

What I like about the game so far.......Furigana! I only know about 200 or so Kanji and the Furigana in game will help me a lot in learning new Kanji,though not exactly by meaning. I guess I should have learned all the Kanji first before hand but well,its all good in the end!

I haven't got too far into the game,just enough to have the first party member join and then save the game. Sometimes,coming back from a vacation for more then the usual time,need to take it easy and ease back into real life at home instead of being in Japan....which I had a very fun time.

Anyhow,looking forward to getting past the part I never got past on the PS version a good long way back.

Kanji is the most fun aspect of learning Japanese in a way. It may be the hardest part, even though I think most Japanese learners have more problems with the usage of particles. Also, it's remembering the on-yomi and kun-yomi that is the biggest challenge.

If you want to be able to read, you've got to know at least 2000 plus the ones used for certain names. There's an extra 1000+ that's not obligatory but that you'll see often in intellectual context.

As soon as I exited my village, something struck me... There's a TERRIBLE amount of pop-up in the game. Trees just pop into existence all over the place. It's really distracting. As bad as the pop-up in Saturn games (Daytona, I'm looking at you).

After you go to the castle, things get a little remixed. There's no running back to your town and back to the castle again. The whole beginning has been shortened to speed things along.

I'm at the ruins now. That whole dungeon is different, with a completely new layout and puzzles.

Now I know I just started, but the whole thing feels a bit... Rushed? The 3D isn't that great, especially compared to the depth in games such as Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Fantasy Life. I *almost* feel like I had a better time with the PS version at this point, but it's waaaaaay early. I haven't even had any combat yet. BUT at this point in the game DQ9 felt more polished.

At the game store, DQ7 was all anyone was buying. When I approached the counter, the lady working there said "Dragon Quest, right?" I didn't even have to say anything.